


a brief poetical sojourn

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Assisted Suicide, Holocaust, Implied Sexual Content, Love Bites, Love Suicide, M/M, Modeling, Past Drug Use, Photography, Portraits, Scars, Suicidal Thoughts, holocaust survivor, nude models
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 16:49:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From tumblr <a href="http://menandmartinis.tumblr.com/post/44575815706">here</a>: <i>The Photographer’s Muse (Meme) takes place in London, England. This is where we find famous Jewish photographer, Erik Lehnsherr. Erik Lehnsherr is the great grandson of Holocaust Survivor and Pulitzer Prize Winner writer-artist, Edie Lehnsherr. Photographer’s Muse begins on a cold, dreary London evening when Erik finds a beautiful young male prostitute huddled around the corner of his apartment building. The shivering boy is clutching a well-worn copy of Hamlet. Erik is bemused and decides to give the boy shelter. After paying for Charles to take off his clothes; Erik is enticed by the milky white flawless young flesh. And within a few days, 16 year old Charles becomes his greatest muse. Soon Erik realizes that this new collection would be his greatest. And informs Charles; that it will also be his last. Because Erik is planning on committing suicide. Now Charles must do his best to save the man that gave him a new life; and stole his heart.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	a brief poetical sojourn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aesc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesc/gifts), [afrocurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/gifts).



> I originally saw this prompt via Aesc's tumblr post [here](http://theletteraesc.tumblr.com/post/44793458345/synekdokee-black-betty-luciddrugs), and the initial, rough draft of a fill was posted to my tumblr [here](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/44796827746/theletteraesc-synekdokee-black-betty). This is a revised and edited version of that original story.
> 
> The title for this fic is related to the idea of _shinjū_ , which is the Japanese term for the kind of suicide pact entered into by lovers or family members or close friends. In Japanese theater, before a play ends with a _shinjū_ , the people in that pact - usually a pair of lovers - take a _michiyuki_ , which is a short poetical journey about love and happiness lost and found.
> 
> Please heed the tags for warnings.

Charles has always been a light sleeper and this night is no exception: all it takes is a motorcycle engine backfiring in the wrong place and at the wrong time, and he’s wide awake again.

He’s still sore, but in a good way: he’s bruised from shoulders to wrists and all over his torso. His mouth feels thoroughly used, and these are all things that he wanted - that he gave freely. Things that were taken from him with grace and gentleness and a beautiful and limitless greed, and so he smiles even as his muscles ache and his nerves protest the good kind of rough treatment they’ve been enduring.

He reaches out to the bedside table and gropes around for a few seconds before he finds the switch that he wants. Soft _click_ , and a wash of pale golden light - just enough to make out the room and the places where it ends. 

Photographs on the walls, a neat line of frames equidistant from the floor and the ceiling. A frightened-looking young woman, on the verge of tears, in a drab blouse with grimy dark stripes and a six-pointed star on her breast. The same woman, silver-haired and wrinkled and many years older, with a smile that did not quite reach the stern shadow in her eyes. 

Men and women and their bodies and emotions writ large against a plain black backdrop: laughter and tears and blankness and anger. The curve of a shoulder, the taper of a leg from the knee to the ankle, an opened hand next to a clenched fist.

Some of the photos, the newest ones, the different ones, are tacked or taped up - as if released from the frames in which the others are contained. 

These photos are of freckles, and of old scars. A close-up on wiry muscle and the back of a knee. Faded track marks against crooked wrist, against pale elbow. A mouth, lush and ripe even in black and white. A coin-sized starburst of recessed skin just nestled in the pale hairless skin between hip and groin. A back, or the lower part of it, as it curves down to the buttocks.

Charles has never actually had a reason to look at himself in just this exact way before, and he fights off the complicated swirl of _that’s me? / that’s me!_ that rises in his heart and in his mind: pride warring with shame warring with a sincere and shy surprise.

He’s in bed with the man who took the photographs, the man who knows what he looks like when he’s out of his clothes, when he’s down to just his own self and his own skin. Long lean lines on that man, a tattoo of barbed wire encircling his upper left forearm, a face that owes its lines and its majesty to the woman with the silver hair.

As Charles watches, the man tosses from side to side on his pillow, and then wakes - a jolt of an action, nothing languid or easy about it, for all that he’d been slow and intense and thoroughly needy when they’d fallen into this bed.

“Charles,” he says, sleep-graveled.

“Erik,” Charles says. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Erik says, and then, “Can I kiss you?”

“Of course,” and Charles offers his mouth willingly, groaning in appreciation as he’s plundered and left breathless once again. 

He gives as good as he gets, though, and Erik looks a little wild-eyed when they finally break apart.

Charles watches Erik’s eyes dart from him, and from his smile. Watches them darken: watches the gray of them fall into the depths of defeat, as he looks at the table on his side of the bed.

A piece of paper covered in dark blue chickenscratch letters, and a gun.

It’s now or never, Charles thinks, and he gathers up his courage and his fear and the strange, soft feeling he gets whenever he looks at Erik. “Is there some way for you to change your mind?”

Erik shakes his head gently. “I don’t think so. You know that I’ve tried everything. I really don’t see what else remains for me to try. Again, I’m not saying that to insult you. I don’t doubt you mean what you’ve been telling me every night. I don’t doubt that I want to keep waking up next to you, want to keep touching you, every minute of every hour of every day. But I can’t. Just can’t any more.

“And we’ve been through this, haven’t we, Charles? Why are we still talking about it - ”

Charles tries to smile, and knows he falters even as he picks up the gun and holds it carefully to Erik’s forehead. He even manages to hold it the way Erik had, with his finger off the trigger. 

“Charles.”

“Erik,” Charles says. “I can do this for you.”

“And after - ” Erik stops, swallows hard, tries again. “Charles, are you going to turn this gun on yourself.”

That he phrases it as a statement and not as a question tears at Charles’s heart, and makes him answer the way he does: “You wouldn’t be here to stop me, then.”

“ _Why -_ ”

“When I told you last night that I could not imagine living without you, Erik, I was really only telling you the truth. I had no hope of you turning away from your path. I just wanted to let you know what I was feeling.”

“Charles - ”

He shakes his head, once, and Erik subsides. “Erik. Just say when.”

Charles’s hands are steady around the gun. He doesn’t know how he manages to smile.

The smile that Erik gives him is slow in coming. It trembles at the corners as he closes his eyes and whispers Charles’s name.


End file.
